Rebel Gold

by Warren Getler

  Significantly, Watie’s minority faction of Cherokees—mostly wealthy, educated, English-speaking slave owners who had intermarried with southern, mostly Scots, whites—had readily adopted the name “Knights of the Golden Circle” by March 1861. No doubt, this southern, pro-slavery Cherokee army—the Cherokee Mounted Rifles—was a direct product of Pike’s handmaiden role.

  When Watie, a veteran of more than twenty major battles, belatedly surrendered in late June 1865, in the Choctaw capital of Doaksville along the Arkansas border of Indian Territory, his Indian Brigade had no arms and munitions. Had Watie hidden his braves’ guns, bullets and cash in the underground depositories of the Knights of the Golden Circle? Indian Territory, as it turned out, would serve as a prime burial ground for KGC caches.57

  Pike—through Scottish Rite connections in Charleston, Little Rock, Washington, Louisville, New Orleans, Nashville, Atlanta, Natchez and Indian Territory—had established a powerful, hidden network of KGC operatives. While a dispersed network of discreet partisans was a necessary condition for success, it was not sufficient. He needed to build a secret organizational infrastructure that allowed for ultimate impact with maximum command, control and communication capabilities. This he achieved through a Masonic-based ritual of initiation.

  After resigning from the Confederate Army, Pike sequestered himself in a remote part of the Ouachita Mountains, called Greasy Cove, in west-central Arkansas. There, in a two-storied house along the Little Missouri River, he maintained a hermit-like existence with his extensive library, beginning in the spring of 1863. Ostensibly, he had retreated from society to continue the revision of the Scottish Rite rituals. Could it be that he was devising a greater, more carefully considered plan for the KGC and its budding underground network of hidden depositories?

  Various local legends existed at the time (and continue to this day) about what Pike was doing in the cabin next to Little Missouri Falls. Rumors swirled about a substantial amount of gold that he supposedly had brought with him. Whether at the hands of Union marauders or simply of greedy interlopers, Pike’s place eventually became the target of a raid. “Believing he had a trunk full of gold hidden there, the marauders laid plans to rob and kill him,” writes Pike biographer Walter Lee Brown.58 “But Pike was warned, so the story goes, by a neighbor’s son and managed to escape in the dead of the night with his money and most of his valuable papers and books.” Pike is said to have paid his informants, friends from nearby Caddo Gap, with a handful of gold coins before fleeing in a horse-drawn buggy.

  If Pike’s real mission in Greasy Cove was to develop new codes and protocols for the inner temple of the KGC, it might have been in response to damaging exposés that had started to appear in the pro-Union press by late 1861.59 No doubt, the secret order’s tried-and-tested subversion methods were still largely intact and troublesome to the North: they simply may have required new types of camouflage in the later and, for the South, more desperate stages of the war. As the author of Narrative of Edmund Wright observed in 1864: “Who conveys in untranslatable cipher or cunningly devised hieroglyphics information to our Southern foe of our plans and movements?”60 With Pike at work refining “new” rituals for his beloved Scottish Rite, could he not also have been overlaying those new rituals—codes, hieroglyphics, passwords, grips, insignia and organizational structure—on the highly transmutable KGC?

  If one knows where to look, numerous overlaps can be found between the abstruse symbols and language of the super-secret KGC and those of the Scottish Rite. The KGC seal as discovered among Bickley’s possessions consists of a Maltese cross with an eight-pointed gold star affixed in the center, all circumscribed by a narrow golden circle adorned with sixteen small points. That badge compares closely with the far more ornate “Scottish Rite jewel belonging to [the Rite’s] Grand Commander, Albert Pike,” with the exception of the “jewel’s” inner star being a bit larger and having nine points, and its outer circle taking the form of a snake biting its tail.61 The author of Narrative of Edmund Wright observed a Confederate officer wearing the KGC seal into battle at Antietam: “Among the marks of his rank, there sparkled a strange jewel, a golden serpent coiled in a circle, and crested with jet enamel. The eyes of the serpent were formed of beautiful diamonds, that fired and sparkled with every movement of the wearer. The ornament conveys no riddle…. The coil was a golden circle. What more simple: Knight of the Golden Circle!”62 A fiery image of a “Golden Serpent” figures prominently in the dark, closeted initiation ceremony of the KGC, as do human skeletons, according to the narrative in Edmund Wright.63

  And there are other parallels between KGC symbolism and that of advanced-degree Freemasonry. The circle on the floor of the Masonic lodge is replicated on the floors of the KGC castle; the skull-and-bones designation of a Master Mason (“a brother to pirates and corsairs”) appears as one of the most widely observed KGC symbols in the literature; the term “chivalry,” a lofty epithet at the time for members of the KGC, most likely derives from Knights Templar associations within the Scottish Rite. Then there are the KGC’s symbols of the five-pointed star, the crescent moon and the radiant sun. All figure prominently in a “Masonic Chart of the Scottish Rite,” dated 1874, on display at the Scottish Rite Museum of Our National Heritage, in Lexington, Massachusetts.64 Atop the enormous bronze doors leading into the Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction headquarters in Washington sits an ornate sunburst sculpture.

  The author of the revealing 1861 Exposition, which contains a vivid illustration of the radiant sun and other key symbols adorning the interior of a KGC castle, described the symbols he encountered inside:

  The symbols were a large bronzed crescent, or new moon, set with fifteen stars; a large temple, under the dome of which shone a beautiful representation of the noon-day sun, and around the corona of which were fixed fifteen stars. To these were added the skull and cross-bones. Now for the language of the symbols: The crescent represents the growing Southern Confederacy; the temple, with its glowing sun and fifteen stars, foreshadows the glorious “sunny South” under the benign influence of a fully matured Southern Government, extending its borders through Cuba, Mexico and Central and South America; the skull and cross-bones signify death to all “Abolitionists” and opposers of Southern Independence.65

  For Pike and others at the pinnacle of the KGC’s pyramid-shaped organizational structure, Scottish Rite Freemasonry offered the KGC more than a matrix of relationships, rituals and symbols. Importantly, it provided a tiered power structure that rigorously channeled information and ensured fierce loyalty, both among rank-and-file and higher-degree Scottish Rite fraternal brothers. In such a conspiracy, the fully informed elite could pass instructions on to cells of obedient, ill-informed foot soldiers. As Thomas P. Kettell, author of the 1866 History of the Great Rebellion, observed: “the Knights of the Golden Circle, having for its primary object the extension and defense of slavery, was organized; and several degrees, as in the Masonic order, were open to the aspirant for high rank in it. To the initiated of the highest rank only was the whole plot revealed, and the others, with but an imperfect idea of its purposes, were employed to further its designs.”66 Adds I. Winslow Ayer, author of The Great North-Western Conspiracy, written around the same time: “Upon this ingenious plan the vast body and mass of the Order simply held the relation of probationary membership, until they were rendered competent through the educational capacity of the society, to advance into full fellowship with its diabolical design.”67

  Such observations must not be taken to mean that all Masons active in the Civil War flocked to the Confederacy and the KGC. In fact, some three hundred generals or high-ranking officers were Masons—some Union, some Confederate. What is significant is that the advanced form of selective Masonry known as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, particularly its Southern Jurisdiction’s Supreme Council under Pike, moved away from its apolitical role and toward engagement with pro-South ideals and pro-South political and military figures. Ultima
tely, it moved into engagement with the underground Confederate Army, the KGC, and may well have been the controlling body.

  On the other hand, lower-degree or “Blue Lodge” Masonry took pains before the outbreak of the war to remain nonpartisan and to plead on a local level to preserve the Union—as Masonic historian Allen E. Roberts points out in his House Undivided: The Story of Freemasonry and the Civil War.68

  By late 1863, the designs of Pike and the KGC were twofold: to continue to strive for Southern independence by helping to defeat the North on the battlefield, and to prepare, simultaneously, for a future conflagration, post–Abraham Lincoln, if they lost the rebellion then under way.

  Yet, Lincoln—the presidential candidate whose election the KGC had secretly supported as a tripwire for secession—had proved himself a most worthy political and military opponent. With victories secured by his generals at Gettysburg and Vicksburg—and with considerable advantages in matériel, a national banking network, nearly $500 million in federally guaranteed greenbacks, mass-assembly production and rail-based logistical lines of supply and communication—Lincoln stood to win not only another victory at the polls but also an outright victory in the trenches.

  As a visionary leader whose primary goals were to preserve the Union and then, later, to improve the Union by abolishing slavery, Lincoln seemed to recognize the challenge posed by the KGC and its terrorism and subversion. Certainly, the beleaguered president had been warned early and directly. Here, some early correspondence is revealing. In the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress can be found three prescient letters. The first, dated April 18, 1861, is from Robert Bethell, a Philadelphia resident and friend of Lincoln’s secretary of war, Simon Cameron:

  Allow me to suggest to your excellency the propriety of using a portion of the secret service money placed at your disposal to discover the parties connected with a secret Society called the Knights of the Golden Circle. There are strong suspicions of their existence in this City—I am informed Wm B Mann Esqr. District Attorney of this City entertains the like opinions with myself as the existence of such a combination among us …69

  Several months later, Lincoln received a lengthy letter from expatriate Samuel T. Glover warning of KGC plans to absorb a long-unstable and vulnerable Mexico—as well as “the whole of Central and parts of South America”—to expand a “slavocracy.”70 Glover urged Lincoln to make a strong stand against such a plot. Then, on April 9, 1862, the president received a personal letter from Union army officer Thomas Ewing, who charged that “strong doubts are entertained about [General George B.] McClellan’s loyalty.” The letter from Ewing, who avers that McClellan is “either false or strangely incompetent” on the battlefield, raises the startling possibility that Lincoln’s top commander, the head of the Army of the Potomac, was a KGC inductee:

  I have lately heard a report, for some time current in Cincinnati, that [William L.] Yancey, while there in the fall of 1860, inducted McClellan a Knight of the Golden Circle—This may be true, or not; but if true it explains fully what was otherwise inexplicable—namely his persistent inaction—the knowledge by the enemy in advance of every contemplated movement, and at last, his generous permission to the enemy to abandon Manassas & retire to a better line of defence, without the loss of even a baggage wagon …71

  Moreover, the author of the 1861 Exposition had described the seriousness of the KGC threat in those early months of the conflict: “The designs of the order … threaten not only the subsequent ruin and destruction of the American Republic but menace the happiness and well-being of every neighborhood north of Mason and Dixon’s line….”72 The unnamed scribe went on to warn that America’s democratically elected form of government was threatened by seditious men attempting to replace it with an oligarchy run by plantation owners, a fact few history books have emphasized in describing the North-South divide: “The American Government is now threatened by an enemy far more dangerous than any it has hitherto contended with. All the foreign powers of the world combined would not be so much to be dreaded as the internal foe we now have to contend with.”73

  Lincoln would take numerous dramatic measures to uphold the supremacy of the Constitution. These included the arrests of more than fifteen thousand civilians—part of a coordinated effort to snuff out the KGC in the North. While these actions surely helped to achieve ultimate Union victory on the battlefield, they may not have been enough to protect the president’s life. Francis Wilson put it well in his 1929 analysis, John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln’s Assassination:

  As was proved, Lincoln was capable of taking care of the Nation: the Nation however, was culpably weak in taking care of him. Lincoln was a fatalist and felt it useless to guard against something that must happen. This helped him readily to disregard things in connection with his personal safety. He would go about from the White House to the War Office at night, or to the Soldiers’ Home, close to Washington, with but a single guard and quite often unaccompanied.74

  Lincoln’s politico-military countermeasures certainly were not enough to eradicate the KGC, which had gone completely underground by the end of 1863. In one of the most prescient—and most overlooked—examinations of the political landscape of the period, the author of the 1861 Exposition prophesied the bloody end of the Lincoln era some four years ahead of the first assassination of an American president:

  Members of the Inner Temple of the Knights of the Golden Circle are to be scattered all through Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland, for the purpose of harassing and injuring the friends and soldiers of the Union in every way they can. If they can use poison successfully, they will do it … if they can, by false statements, so direct the movements of the United States troops as to cause them loss or defeat, they will do that. … But one thing above all others, some one of them is to distinguish himself for—if he can, that is—the assassination of the ‘Abolition’ President.75

  John Wilkes Booth, a popular Shakespearean actor from Maryland, took up the challenge. Booth reportedly became a KGC initiate in the fall of 1860 in a “castle” in Baltimore. According to The Great Conspiracy, a richly detailed albeit anonymous account from 1866, the high-strung thespian took the vows of the KGC in a room adorned with portraits of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas, and a bust of John C. Calhoun.76 There, according to the book’s opening pages, the zealous Confederate sympathizer swore to “risk all to help Southern Independence,” as well as to end “Yankee domination” and to “resort to all means, underneath the canopy of the heavens, to carry out these ends.”77 Booth, who had plotted to abduct Abraham Lincoln before his 1861 inauguration and then again to kidnap the president in March and early April 1865, most likely planned and carried out the assassination on his own initiative with the support of a handful of paid followers.

  It is possible that Booth—whose only formal role for his beloved “secesh” cause was running quinine and other medicines behind enemy lines—acted at the request or silent encouragement of others far more powerful than he in a general plot to destabilize the government in Washington during the final phases of the war. The anonymous author of The Great Conspiracy tells of a KGC meeting in Richmond in early 1865 that Booth allegedly attended. Booth was a Richmond resident at the time, a fairly well-known member of the city’s theater company. While in that Richmond castle meeting, and without ever identifying himself, Booth reportedly spoke about a mortal blow to Lincoln being planned. The head of the KGC cell took no position other than to say that if such a “daring deed” were to happen and its perpetrator were to escape uninjured, then the KGC would need to “treat him as a friend and brother” and “extend all possible facilities” for safe passage.78

  Izola Forrester, who claimed to be Booth’s granddaughter, quotes family associates as saying that the president’s assassin was a member of the KGC castle in Baltimore.79 Forrester, in her well-researched This One Mad Act exposé of 1937, makes the following dramatic comment in the preface: “ �
� after forty years of ceaseless research to find new material and verify reports and rumors, I have come to the following conclusions … that Lincoln’s assassination was instigated by men high in the order of the Knights of the Golden Circle, said to have been a branch of Freemasonry, flourishing in the North as well as in the South.” [Italics added.]80

  A staunch supporter of slavery and the Confederate cause (although never one to take up the Rebel uniform), Booth positively did not act alone when he mortally wounded Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, just after ten o’clock on the evening of April 14, 1865. Numerous articles, essays and books have been written on just who was behind the Lincoln assassination and what their motives might have been. One of the best-researched recent volumes, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, sets out the case for direct Confederate government support of the Lincoln assassination plot, primarily through Booth’s links to senior Confederate secret service agents operating from Canada.81 Somewhere along the line, Booth’s mission changed from kidnapping Lincoln and using him as supreme bargaining leverage (for prisoner exchange and/or strategic goals) to murdering the president. But whether Booth made that decision himself may never be known.

  Judah P. Benjamin, who late in the war served as Confederate spy-master, is believed to have funneled funds to a bank used by Booth in Montreal before the assassination. Earlier in the war, according to a leading Confederate political figure from Virginia, Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart, Benjamin had placed a deposit equivalent to three million British pounds-sterling in a London bank for use by KGC operatives in Canada.82 U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward, following the assassination and the coordinated attempt on his own life, reportedly said that he believed that Booth and his direct accomplice, John Surratt, had conferred with Benjamin about the plot.83 Seward believed that Benjamin had encouraged and subsidized the plan but had not discussed it with any other member of the Confederate cabinet. Whether or not it was an acknowledgment by Benjamin of complicity, the former U.S. Senator from Louisiana was the only high-level Confederate exile not to return to the United States after the war: he elected to spend his remaining years as a high-paid lawyer in London. Before his flight from Richmond with Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge and other ranking members of the Confederate government, Benjamin reportedly burned all documents related to the Confederacy’s secret service—and, most likely, its KGC and “Copperhead” links, including, one could imagine, those to Booth.84